Category: Sci-fi
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Predator: Killer of Killers
4 outta 5 Predator: Killer of Killers is an awesomely gnarly addition to the Predator franchise. As an animated film, it allows for extreme camera angles and action that wouldn’t necessarily work in live action but looks dang cool in animation. As an anthology film, each story skips across the centuries of Predators enacting carnage…
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Mickey 17
5 outta 5 Writer and director Bong Joon Ho, who won Best Director and Best Picture for Parasite, has a very diverse set of films. He is interested in themes like class struggle, environmental challenges, and settings like sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, action and monsters like his movies The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja. So as wild and…
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Companion
4 outta 5 Companion is a clever and subversive sci-fi horror thriller about romance, robots, murder and software manipulation. While the notion of someone falling in love with a robotic artificial intelligence has been done in films like Her or Ex Machina, this is still a distinct take. Companion is less about potential robotic apocalypse…
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Transformers One
4 outta 5 After several “live action” installments of the Transformers franchise, the series returns to its animated roots with Transformers One. However, there was so much CGI animation in the series’ previous films, that it’s hard to make much of a distinction between live action and animation by now. Which isn’t a bad thing.…
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Uglies
2 outta 5 Uglies is a YA novel adaptation that really doesn’t offer anything particularly good. It feels cobbled together from other sci-fi dystopian franchises and that bubble burst a few years ago. The central hook, that people in a dystopian future society undergo mandatory, mind-controlling cosmetic surgery, feels basic. Even the action, such as…
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Alien: Romulus
4 outta 5 Alien: Romulus is a crackerjack entry in the Alien franchise that flips between knowing homages, splicing in bits of continuity, flat-out ripping off others and repeating some bits exactly. It can be sort of a “greatest hits” version of a few Alien movies all combined into one, and its willingness to take…
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Atlas
3 outta 5 Atlas is a film that owes so much to James Cameron’s sci-fi films of Aliens, Avatar and Terminator that he should have probably gotten a “Based On” credit. Star Jennifer Lopez has a resume that is particularly heavy on romantic films, where the isolated lead has to learn to connect with their…
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